For conventional online auctions such as that by EBAY by ebay, Inc. of San Jose, Calif., each item can only be sold once to the highest bidder. When the bid is accepted, the auction is over.
Continuous auctions include those for bidding for Internet search engine key-phrases in order to achieve the highest possible rankings on a search engine. The search engine found at GOTO.COM by Goto.com, Inc. of Pasadena, Calif. is an exemplary continuous auction. In this type of auction, the search engine lists web-page search results for a key-phrase search in the order of bid prices from advertisers. The advertiser with the highest bid for a given key-phrase appears first in the list, the next highest bidder appears second, etc. Since key-phrases are intangible, the same key-phrase can be sold to an unlimited number of users and the auction runs continuously with the rankings changing according to the current bids from advertisers.
As these and other types of continuous auctions become more common in many areas of commerce, it will become more difficult for bidders to monitor bids in several different auctions.
There exists a need for a system that monitors the current rankings in auctions and automatically adjusts its bids according to the rules defined by its user.